Category: Economic Opportunity

We could not in good conscience patronize campus facilities to discuss our work to advance economic opportunity and justice for all Iowans when a serious threat to workers’ rights was being mounted in front of us.

An Open Letter to the President of Grinnell College

The Iowa Policy Project Board of Directors met Tuesday in Grinnell. This would not normally be particularly noteworthy, but circumstances are not currently normal in Grinnell.

Grinnell College is a true asset to the state of Iowa, a private college with a strong educational reputation. Our organization has enjoyed holding our board meetings on the college campus in recent years, but this week decided we could not in good conscience patronize campus facilities and chose to relocate our scheduled meeting to a nearby off-campus restaurant.

We are deeply disturbed that the college’s leadership has so far refused to honor the results of a recent election in which student workers exercised their legal right to indicate their desire to bargain collectively with their employer. We were even more deeply disturbed that December 10th, one day prior to our meeting, the college took the extreme step of attempting to deny Grinnell student workers any rights as employees, via an appeal to the National Labor Relations Board. With this move, college leaders signaled their clear intent to trigger a federal Board decision that they know could in turn strip rights from millions of college and university employees (if they also happen to be students) across the country.

The college’s position matters to us because it matters for Iowa and the nation. We cannot promote the work our organization does to encourage economic opportunity and justice for the people of our state — including the rights of workers to organize and collectively bargain — and ignore a serious threat to those rights being mounted right in front of us.

We wish the college, its students, administrators, instructors and staff the best, and hope we will be able to return to campus for our next meeting upon learning the college has reversed its position.

As I spoke to a University of Iowa finance class this week, I wondered: Did they vote?

I showed these students data on a variety of issues, closing with the reversal from state support to tuition as the largest share of funding Iowa universities, an issue affecting most if not all of the class. Here is what it looks like for the University of Iowa:

Today, The Gazette of Cedar Rapids landed on my doorstep with a page 1 story about the Board of Regents’ plans to raise tuition 3 percent to 5 percent a year for the next five years at the UI and Iowa State University. The size of the increase will depend on new funding. An increase of at least 3 percent a year results from years of cutting.

My talk to the finance class came six days after Iowa voters retained Statehouse leadership that has forced the regents to tell families to plan on tuition increases for the next five years. The regents’ plan implicitly shows they expect more of the same from the Legislature and Governor.

I told the students that I hoped they had voted, and that they would pay attention to the impacts of public policy choices on their lives. Maybe they did, and maybe they are OK with the policy choices made, and coming.

They will be living with these impacts — student loan debt among them — long after many of us are gone. If they want something different, they will have to speak up, and they will have to do so in large numbers.

Iowa is out of step with the majority of states by refusing to close corporate tax loopholes. Equity demands better.

Through the years in Iowa, very few lawmakers have had the courage to take on an utter abomination in our corporate tax system: tax loopholes.

It is one thing to expressly pass a tax preference — a credit, exemption or deduction — with a specific purpose, clearly defined for all taxpayers to see and reviewed for its effectiveness. (Iowa does not provide such accountability with many such preferences, but that is for another post.)

It is quite another thing, however, to see weaknesses in your tax code exposed and exploited by large companies, and to leave those holes open for routine abuse. Welcome to Iowa.

States can nullify a variety of tax avoidance strategies employed by large multistate corporations by adopting a reform known as “combined reporting,” which treats a parent company and its subsidiaries as one entity for state income tax purposes, thereby minimizing companies’ ability to shift income earned in a state to other states that are tax havens (like Delaware and Nevada).

The figure below shows Iowa is out of step with the majority of states on this issue. All but one of our neighboring states has a corporate income tax, and all but one of those states has combined reporting to stop companies from avoiding taxes that were originally intended by the tax code to be collected.

The Iowa Policy Project and Iowa Fiscal Partnership have been encouraging Iowans to look at this issue for many years. We made it part of our 2018 Tax Policy Kit — explaining here how Iowa could save itself tens of millions of dollars that are squandered to companies that effectively set their own tax policy. The Iowa Taxpayers Association consistently defends this break that not only burdens our state, but tilts the playing field to big, multistate corporations and against Iowa-based, Iowa-focused businesses.

Two governors, Tom Vilsack and Chet Culver, at times proposed adoption of combined reporting, but the issue — while getting some attention at the committee level — has not reached a floor vote in the House or Senate.

Iowa’s tax code needs to be fair to all residents. It needs to generate revenue to sustain services that are important to all residents, from education to water quality to law enforcement to health care. To allow corporations to set their own rules by exploiting weaknesses in the tax code defies these oft-stated Iowa values of fairness and accountability.

It’s so easy to overdo it — with pumpkin spice or with tax-cut rhetoric. Keep it simple. The tax cuts are for the wealthy, and come at great cost of services while making the tax system less fair.

You find it everywhere these days: pumpkin spice this, pumpkin spice that … tax cuts this, tax cuts that. It’s so easy to overdo it — with pumpkin spice or with tax-cut rhetoric.

Keep it simple. The tax cuts are for the wealthy, and come at great cost of services while making the tax system less fair.

Just ask the Iowa Department of Revenue, which produced the following analysis in May, just before state legislators rammed their backroom tax package for the rich through both houses of the Legislature and to the Governor’s desk. Yes, she signed it.

And here are the numbers behind those sections of the pumpkin above:

Put another way, almost 40 percent of resident taxpayers will get about 3 percent of the benefit of the tax cut in tax year 2021; over four-fifths of taxpayers will together see only about 26 percent of the benefit. On the other hand, the top 2.5 percent — families making over $250,000 — will receive 46 percent of the benefit.

This was a tax cut for the richest Iowans, who did not need a cut, and the bill overall will cost almost a half billion dollars in 2021.[1]

These effects have been apparent for months,[2] despite claims that are obvious distortions, according to the Department of Revenue analysis.

That analysis shows the average tax change in tax year 2021 for people making between $50,000 and $60,000 — this covers the latest median-income level of $58,570 — would be a $156 cut, or less than $3 a week. Don’t spend it all in one place. Meanwhile, the cut for millionaires would, on average, be $24,636.

By the way, the “fact checkers” who let loose-speaking pols off the hook for their exaggerations about tax cuts are often missing a critical point: Many Iowans, including some middle- and moderate-income working families, actually will see tax increases, or no change at all, if the new law is not changed.

Of course, most won’t see these effects right away, despite the promises. How convenient.

Concerns about IPERS changes stem directly from leaders’ comments, proposed legislation and a longtime goal of ideologues on the right who have become more strident.

IPERS, the Iowa Public Employees’ Retirement System, has come under attack in recent years for no substantive reason — only ideology and politics. Understandably, IPERS members, who number well over 10 percent of the population of Iowa, are concerned.

So, some folks are engaged in what might be called “care tactics,” to make sure the stakes on that issue are well-understood. People who care want good information, and are asking for it.

These efforts and concerns are being dismissed by those who claim there is no threat to IPERS. Political scare tactics indeed are part of the 2018 campaign on several issues — primarily taxes, as illustrated by the hair-on-fire ads on television that do more to distort than inform.

But it’s hard to make that case about pension concerns, which stem directly from leaders’ comments, proposed legislation and a longtime goal of ideologues on the right who have become more strident.

Those now dismissive of pension concerns point to recent campaign-season comments by Governor Kim Reynolds. Yet not so long ago Reynolds herself raised the prospect of some change in IPERS’ actual pension structure to a “defined contribution” or 401k-style structure for new employees.[1] Her predecessor, Terry Branstad, had made similar comments.[2] Legislation was proposed in 2017 in the Senate.[3] All of this remains fresh in the minds of those who are worried, as do efforts by others to undermine IPERS.

IPERS critics have promoted that riskier “defined contribution” structure, needlessly scaring Iowa taxpayers about Iowa’s secure IPERS system. The Des Moines Register has run such scare pieces, by Don Racheter of the Public Interest Institute[4] and by Gretchen Tegeler of the Taxpayers Association of Central Iowa.[5]

Neither the media nor IPERS critics have been able to explain how a separate system based on a 401k style structure — “defined contribution” — could be introduced for new employees without undermining existing and promised IPERS benefits for current members.

Contributions plus Interest investments equal Benefits plus Expenses in administration of the system— this is what is required for full funding of IPERS. If you reduce that first item, contributions, by setting new employees apart in a different plan, clearly that matters. It’s math.

In fact, it affects more than those new employees. Reducing contributions by diverting those from new employees reasonably means lower benefits — for current members!

The media and all policy makers should be asking more about this. It’s not enough to accept a “nothing to see here” argument from someone who in the recent past declared herself open to a change — especially when activists have pushed for it, and legislation has been proposed. The dismissal — not exposing it — is the “scare tactic.”

Let’s stay away from the “scare tactics,” and focus on the “care tactics.”

Iowans need a handle on what the budget surplus means, and what it doesn’t.

With new revenue information in hand, it is apparent that:

• Large cuts to higher education were unnecessary
• Continuing to short-change K-12 schools was needless
• Concerns about large tax cuts were warranted.

During the 2018 session we saw legislators craft mid-year cuts and an FY2019 austerity budget behind closed doors. The effect will be the same as it has been for several years now: Iowa lawmakers won’t have much to work with when the 2019 legislative session convenes in January due to large tax cuts, leaving tight purse strings for education.

The October 2018 Revenue Estimating Conference (REC) projections show a $127 million surplus — up $95.6 million from what was expected for fiscal year 2018, which ended in June.[1] Many in the state are searching for factors they think contributed to the surplus. In reality, the discrepancy in expected and actual revenue is related to errors in forecasting. The REC used a slower rate of growth in calculating these projections after overestimating revenues for the past two fiscal years.

A significant factor contributing to the surplus is a state revenue boost caused by new federal tax cuts, especially for higher-income families. Iowa has a special state break for federal taxes paid. But because fewer federal taxes are being withheld, additional income is subjected to state tax.

Proponents of the state tax cuts seek to attribute the budget surplus to the cuts themselves. First, it is impossibleto credit the budget surplus to the 2018 state tax cuts, most of which will not take full effect until 2019 and beyond.

Second, even the REC estimates do not predict continued growth at the FY18 levels. Iowa will have already given away the FY18 surplus before the beginning of the next legislative session, because tax cuts mean less revenue. The FY20 budget will be tight. This will steer the legislative discourse to hold down K-12 spending, to push higher-ed costs toward tuition and student debt, and to threaten needed services and institutions — as the administration is doing right now to the University of Iowa Labor Center.

Sustainable budgeting requires realistic forecasts and working to help all Iowans understand the impacts of budget and tax choices. It also means generating adequate revenue to pay for essential services such as education, health care and environmental quality, and helping to create opportunity for all.

We’ll throw a penalty flag when we see bad information being spread about issues we cover. Case in point: the Governor’s spin about taxes.

At the Iowa Policy Project, we are nonpartisan and we do not support or endorse candidates for office. Rather, we hope those who do, and the candidates and parties themselves, will conduct their discussions on a foundation of fact.

When they do not, we just might throw a penalty flag.Our work is public policy research and analysis, to help people see what is fact and what is not, and to introduce context where it is missing. This is not always easy with complex issues, and there are gray areas. Where bad information is being spread, that interferes with the mission of our work, so we will do what we can to keep that record straight.

Very early in Wednesday’s debate between Governor Kim Reynolds and businessman Fred Hubbell, the Governor made at least two clearly unsupportable claims about taxes. These are issues we cover constantly.

First, the 2018 tax overhaul not only was costly, but overwhelmingly benefited the wealthiest.Any suggestion to the contrary is simply unsupportable, using data provided by the Iowa Department of Revenue in May before the bill passed. Those supporting the bill knew this would be the impact, and those writing it drew it that way.

According to the department, the legislation will mean either no change, or an actual tax increase, to nearly a quarter of resident taxpayers — 23.3 percent — in tax year 2019. For those who receive cuts, the average cut for millionaires was projected to be $20,021; for someone between $60,000 and $70,000 adjusted gross income, the cut was projected to be a tiny sliver of the benefit compared to millionaires — $232.

This flatly negates the Governor’s comment that, “In 2019, virtually every single Iowan will see their taxes go down.” This is clearly inaccurate. Further, as the law is phased in, the continuing impact will be that some will lose, some will not. Unquestionably it will affect public services as hundreds of millions in revenues are cut — which means Iowans who depend upon those services, and that is most Iowans, will lose even more.

Second, the Governor in pushing for new corporate tax cuts chose to play to the myths about business taxes promoted by the business lobby to drive down Iowa’s already low business taxes.

Business consultants have exposed the hollow core of this claim, most recently the Anderson Economic Group, which in June ranked Iowa 15th lowest in state and local business taxes (all of which are governed by state policy). Iowa business taxes consistently have been shown to be competitive.

For more information about both the tax legislation and Iowa taxes on business see these resources: